Portfolio Selection - Preparation for the London Book Fair

Selecting images for my physical portfolio is critical as I want to show artworks that will showcase my abilities in digital painting and the type of content I produce. In preparation for the London Book Fair, I carefully selected several images that are aimed towards the market of book covers and children book/fiction book illustrations. The target audience at this London Book Fair are art directors, publishers and authors so I think it is best to select some of the narrative based illustrations I have done outside of university work. Characters can be included though I think they will need to be put into context (narrative illustrations or storyboards) so the viewers can visually relate it to the theme of storytelling and see the potential end product that they might have in mind when seeing them.

Looking into my collection of narrative based illustrations I have created, there isn’t really enough content for my portfolio as most of these were produced outside of university hours in my spare time. There are a few works which I had retouched upon so they can be added to the portfolio (e.g. children’s book illustration) though due to the time I have left before the London Book Fair I do not think I am able to produce enough content to get to the bare minimum amount of images.

Here are some of the illustrations I have selected to be put into my physical portfolio for the London Book Fair. 

For the physical portfolio I have bought an A4 Prat Paris folder with built in crystal clear sleeves, sadly I had missed out on a discount which I could of got the portfolio folder at around half of its original price tag so I ended up purchasing it at its full original price. This is something I wouldn’t mind, though optimally I would have preferred to get it at a discount though I am expected to invest some amount of money for really good quality products to display my artwork so, to me paying at around £40 for the portfolio is ok as this is an item I will be keeping throughout my future art career. 

Dummy prints in my portfolio folder to work out where the images goes in terms of order as well as transitions from one artwork to the next to ensure that the sequence of viewing each image one after the after runs smoothly when viewing.

The only thing I need to do for the physical portfolio is to add/produce more illustrations as much as possible before the London Book Fair and I would need to spend some time printing my artworks on good quality matte paper using an inkjet printer. 

In addition, I have added text to one or two illustrations to put them into context, for example, one of the images I have retouched on is from a children’s book module, and decided to see what it would like with and without the text. After doing so and printed them to see the physical outcome, I had chosen the one with the text as it fits with the purpose of the portfolio, to showcase some artworks in the context of storyboards and narratives in which art directors and publishers would want to see. 

Original illustration for Children's book module from last year (2016)

Retouch of the Children's book illustration (2017)

Retouch illustration with the text for narrative/storyboard context.

Another illustration (children's book) that has been retouched in preparation for the London Book Fair.

The print quality for my images needs to be high quality in order to show my illustrations at the highest quality possible and had chosen a matte quality finish paper for the best results. Glossy paper feels unsuitable as the reflective coating on the paper can cause glares when people view them. Beforehand I have 100gsm matte paper to print, however the paper feels a bit thin and the quality is noticeable in terms of colour, so I made a last minute decision to get matte paper in order to increase the colour quality to a higher standard. Using the 100 gsm matte paper on the inkjet printer to print made the colour quality terrible and looks to appear as if it’s been faded, however, using a laser print shows a much better result (in terms of colour and detail) so I think it is more suitable to use the laser print for that kind of paper, but I personally feel that the inkjet printer is more preferred option for printing images at a professional standard. In the end I had used a 170 gsm Canon Matte Photo Paper to print in my Inkjet printer and the quality result is at a much higher standard than the previous with the Ryman’s Multi-purpose Matte Paper. 

Using the Ryman 100gsm High-White Multi-Purpose Matte paper to print using my Inkjet Paper. The faded colours were very noticeable and looks unsuitable for my liking for a printed image for my portfolio. 

Using the same paper but printed using a laser print paper. The noticeable differences between the colours are very high and it seems that using thin paper to print via an Inkjet Printer makes the image quality terrible, so a laser print printer is best for thin paper while Inkjet is better for thick/heavy weight paper. 

For the order of images in my portfolio there are a mix of portrait and landscape images so the most optimal way of presenting them was to assort all landscape images at the front and then all the portrait images. Tutors suggested the idea so the portfolio doesn’t look “cluttered” in a way that you would have to keep rotating the portfolio around every so often which I do agree with as it will be a little annoying having to keep rotating 1 page or so to view the images. In terms of image placement (the order of images) I have carefully placed them in specific order, in such a way that the transition between each images runs smoothly.